Ken Layne, whose book I am reading two months later than everyone else in the blogiverse, comments on his own Gore is a loser post:

Please, God, give us a viable candidate in 2004. As it stands, we could be in a major depression and Bush & Cheney could be in jail, and Gore would still lose.

Gore fits right in ... with the pathetic losers the Democrats have nominated my whole voting life (with the exception of Clinton, who I both loathe and sorta like). Mondale, Dukakis, Gore ... when will it end?

As for that prissy jackhole Vinegar Joe Lieberman, I'd rather vote for a snakehead fish.

Unsolicted Poli Sci 101 combined with advice for disaffected Democrats from someone who will probably never be a Democrat:

Your party has been captured by a coalition of single issue interest groups, none of which appeals broadly to the middle class. I am talking about the teachers unions, NARAL, etc. Republicans have their own special interests to contend with, of course, but on a national level, at least, the Republicans seem to be better at restraining their single interest groups in favor of a wider agenda than the Democrats.

There are only two solutions: Recapture the party using more broadly based groups or leave the party to form your own.

You can't succeed doing both simultaneously, and whichever option you choose, you won't succeed if you only do it halfway.

Political opinion is spread along a spectrum and the voting population is distributed along that spectrum in a bell curve. Winning elections involves moving to the center of the spectrum or moving the center towards your position. Democrats have been spectacularly unsuccessful at moving the center towards themselves on the issues of concern to the individual special interest groups now largely in control of the party. The only other option is to move the party towards the center.

That means taking the party back from the Democratic brand of special interests now entrenched in the party. Doing so would probably yield faster and more certain results (in terms of federal and state legislative seats, gubernatorial wins, better Presidential candidates and maybe even actual Presidents). But it will necessarily involve adopting a political philosophy other than racial (and most, if not all, other) preferences, demonizing businessmen and claiming that "We fight for the little guy" while cozying up to your own Hollywood and other bigwigs and attempting to strip the middle class of a large(r) portion of its wealth. [Note to readers and critics of CognoCentric (may you both be many): The foregoing characterizations are just that: characterizations. Democrats would not describe their positions in that manner, but I believe the characterizations to be accurate, even if they are simplified and somewhat insulting.]

Changing those messages will involving seriously pissing off a number of the existing power centers within the party. Yes, you will lose Al Sharpton's support, for example. But in doing so, you will gain far more support from moderates disgusted by Sharpton than you lose. That's what Clinton did. (Remember Sistah Soldier?) Besides, where else is Sharpton going to go? He can either sit out the election and risk a Republican victory or support the Republicans and ensure that victory. The first option will, at best, result in thoroughly alienating the other power centers within the Democratic party which now maintain friendly relations with Sharpton, and the second (which is little more than a theoretical possibility in any event) will do that to an even greater degree. Neither option results in any political benefit to Sharpton. Formation of an effective new party by Sharpton is not a likely outcome, for the reasons discussed below. You can safely and profitably start to diss Sharpton.

Bolting from the party to form a new one is far difficult in this country than it is elsewhere. Of the eight presidential elections in which I have voted, there have been three in which a serious third party candidate ran: Anderson, Perot and Nader. Despite the expenditure of millions of dollars, none got more than a few percentage points of the popular vote. I am not sure, but I don't think any of those candidates won any electoral votes, either. The only effect they had was to throw the election to whichever of the two other principal candidates was farthest away from the third party candidate on the political spectrum.

It requires a great deal of both persistence and money to form a new political party. Forming a new party will, in the short term, result in little benefit to the party members while also causing a great deal of damage to the old party. Because of the near term damage which would be done to their former party, not many Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) are generally willing to desert their party in favor of creating a new one, preferring to try to influence the existing party.

Since only a centrist party can win elections in the US, no new party with any chance of winning can be formed by a group for which a single issue such as abortion or the environment is so important as to override all other concerns, or even a coalition of such groups. Those groups won't join the new party without a commitment by the party to adopt the appropriate position on THE issue. That, in turn, will result in the new party being effectively branded as extremist on that issue. The people needed to form a new centrist party are the same ones who, in terms of sheer numbers, should be capable of retaking the old party from the special interests in the first place.

So, all in all, I'd say take the damn party back from the Sharptons of the world. If that doesn't work, you can always try to form a new party later, but stay away from Sharpton, Nader and their ilk.

 
The Prof is never going to get his Boeing if he continues to work as the unpaid research assistant for a UPI columnist.

I haven't made up my mind whether that's a good thing.

 
Ahhhhh! That's better. I found the magic bullet to change the green background color of Cognocentric. Finding it was actually pretty easy once I decided to look.

One of the first people kind enough to notice and comment on my blog was Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings, who noted the unfortunate color scheme of the template I was using and suggested that the reasoning behind that use was an affinity for his similarly colored site. Alas, no. While I read Unqualified Offerings fairly religiously, I chose the template because it was the only one on which I could figure out how to put perma links.

And now I have figured out how to lose the color.

You will all soon be within my power! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

 
I have arrived.

The Instapundit bandwith bandwagon is in full swing, as CognoCentric is linked by the master for the first time.

Don't be strangers. Y'All come back anytime, y'heah?

 
Jane Galt is a new addition to the links on your left. She has a series of posts on the proposed war on Iraq, all of which are well written and astute. This one, however, causes me to quibble. She states that the nuclear balance of power from the 1950s to the 1990s, which was based on the theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD, which has got to be the most appropriate acronym in the history of mankind) was stable.

Well, yes and no.

It was certainly very stable at the beginning of that time period and remained very stable until the 1970s or early 1980s. At that point, missle guidance technology had advanced to the point where the likelihood of a missile landing within a few feet of its intended target was very high.

There are three points in time when a nuclear power can launch its missiles:

Before the other guy does.

After the other guy does, but before his missiles start exploding overhead.

After the other guy does and after his missiles have already exploded.

The first option is a pre-emptive strike and, as far as I know, was never seriously considered as an option for US policy.

The third option is what our policy was from the beginning of the nuclear age until the mid to late seventies or early eighties (I may be wrong on the time frame, here, but probably not by much). This option really is mutual assured destruction: You can kill our nation, but not our retaliatory capacity. It will survive your strike, it will be launched following your strike and you will not survive that counterstrike. The same message is received from the adversary. Both messages are accepted as true. Ergo, no nuclear strikes.

But for that to work, our counterstrike capacity had to survive a first strike. With the improved guidance systems, this was becoming less and less likely. Fortunately, this was only true of our land based missiles. If our bomber fleet could get off the ground, the individual bombers became immune to nuclear strikes, and only a few of them needed to be able to penetrate Soviet and/or Chinese air defenses to inflict what was assumed to be unacceptable losses on the adversary. The other leg of our nuclear triad, missile submarines, (the boomers of Tom Clancy fame) were relatively immune at sea. The problem in both cases was communications with the "launch platform" after suffering a first strike.

We tried to find a way around the problem. For example each of our new MX missiles was to be housed in one of several silos and moved periodically. Playing peekaboo with our retaliatory capacity (the assumed target of any first strike) was designed to make a successful first strike harder by increasing the number of potential targets. Either the MX was never deployed (which is what I seem to recall) or MIRV technology (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles) negated the needle in the haystack advantage. In any event, in the seventies or eighties, it became stated US policy that its land based missiles would be launched when we received warning that either of our nuclear adversaries (PRC and USSR) had launched their missiles.

We literally had our fingers on a hair trigger for the better part of fifteen years. It still worked, but it wasn't what immediately comes to mind when the word "stable" is used.

 
A man after my own heart:

If anyone tried playing Celine Dion at my funeral, I'd come straight out of the coffin to kill them.

Gregory Hlatky via Rand Simberg.

 
Via Instapundit:

Brad de Long describes the four stages of becoming a neoconservative:

The first stage is to hold that the flaws--the mighty flaws--of the center-left in American politics are important enough to more-or-less balance the flaws of the right.

First, I would like to note that there is no "left" in Mr. de Long's analysis, only the "center-left." The absence of a left, of course, does not prohibit the existence of the "right" for Mr. de Long to poke at. Labels, Mr. de Long; please take more care with your labels.

Second, Mr. de Long's readers are left to conclude that the flaws of the left should not "balance out" the flaws of the left. This sounds an awful lot like a contradiction of the moral equivalence arguments so beloved of the left: Since no culture is superior to any other culture, whatever emanates from a culture must be acceptable. And: Since the US is not a perfect utopia, it has no standing to complain about the world's worst despots. Please note that I am not familiar enough with Mr. de Long's writing to know whether he indulges in such arguments, and I therefore make no claims as to him. However, there are any number of left leaning writers who do. Because I don't buy the moral equivalence argument, at least when the attempt is made to equate the inherently unequivalent, such as Palestinian suicide bombers (homicide bombers, 'splodeydopes, you pick the term) with Israeli settlers or the regular Israeli army, I also don't buy Mr. de Long's strawman argument that conservatives can validly make the same type of argument as to unequivalents.

The second stage is to start making desperate and implausible excuses for Republican politicians and functionaries.

Note that the "right" has now assumed the persona of "Republican politicians and functionaries." Undesperate and plausible excuses are obviously permitted, then? How about just plausible explanations of a position assumed or an action taken by a politician or functionary of either party? Desperation has nothing to do with it. Nor does party affiliation.

I am willing to ascribe a certain level of integrity to most people who engage in public discourse. Until, that is, their integrity has been shown to be lacking. As in the use of phony polling data to gin up support for a position you've already adopted. I've got no problem with you taking the position, just don't lie to me by producing a phony poll claiming that your position is the one held by so and so many Americans. After I am shown slanted polling questions obviously designed to elicit a specific response, as opposed to a genuine attempt to determine where the polled group stands on an issue, my bullshit detector starts to go off whenever I hear from the group that sponsored that poll.

Additionally because Mr. de Long is talking about the changes in ones political philosophy (ie: changes in one's subjective thought processes and political leanings) the fact that an explanation may actually be implausible is irrelevant unless the maker of that statement believes it to be so. And how may conservatives (neo or otherwise) make explanations that they believe to be implausible? My guess would be about the same as the number of liberals doing so: relatively few.

The third stage is to lose contact with the substance of public policy issues, and focus instead on intellectual and rhetorical "errors" made by those left of center.

Again with the labels. There is no left, only left of center. Mr. de Long thinks that the deaths of six million children annually from starvation is more important than the fact that some members of the American left is attempting to generate propaganda by asking slanted questions in polls. He is right to feel that way. I don't know whether six million children die each year from starvation, but even one such death would be more important than an attempt to propagandize the US electorate. But then he assumes that attempting to creating phony "public support" for a specific attempt to deal with the problem he cares about through the use of biased polling questions has no importance at all. There, he is wrong. The end simply does not justify the means. Obtaining a politically acceptable answer does not justify the use of biased polling questions.

De Long also assumes that, by complaining about those biased polling questions, Mickey Kaus has somehow indicated that he does not care about the deaths of six million children annually from starvation. I think its a safe bet that de Long is wrong there, as well.

And the fourth stage is to start acclaiming right-wing political hacks as noble thinkers, and right-wing office holders as bold and far-sighted leaders with a plan to guide us to utopia.

Note that now we have gone all the way from plain old "right" to right-wing political hacks and right wing office holders. Obviously, by definition, there can be no conservative other than a hack, and no conservative office holder could ever be bold or far sighted. So it stands to reason that anyone who agrees with a conservative or believes that a conservative is a noble thinker or that a conservative office holder is bold or far-sighted must be wrong. QED.

If this is what passes for political discourse these days on the left, I'd prefer to skip it, if its all the same to you.

Oh, and as to the use of biased polling questions (for the specific purpose of creating a false appearance of public support for a given proposition) as justifiable in light of the gravity of the problem being addressed by that proposition: Wouldn't that qualify as a "desperate and implausible excuse for politicians and functionaries"?

 
Andrea Harris (who LINKS with me!!!) has a screed on policies which have accreted over the years which almost have to have the effect of discouraging adoption (and thus encouraging abortion). While the ongoing stupidity of the nanny state has been well documented, Andrea's comments are well worth reading.

 
Jeff Jarvis doesn't like the fact that the Gettysburg Address will be read at the observance of the first 9/11 anniversary.

How many people on a committee did it take to come up with that ridiculous compromise to saying something real.

The Gettysburg Address is about a nation at civil war, a nation that was not sure whether it could survive. That is not us. We are not in a civil war; we are united! We are not unsure about our fate; we know that we will and should survive.

I disagree.

The Gettysburg Address, all 267 words of it, is set out below. My comments interspersed.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

We are now engaged in a war to see whether our nation, or any nation "conceived in liberty" can endure, or whether theocratic thugs will decide when and where my wife can go for a walk.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

They will be.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

That is part of what they will be there to do, given the thousands who are now what either Steyn or Lileks called "death loam." (Sorry, guys, I can't remember which of you said it.) To be fair to Mr. Jarvis, the thousands of dead, with the exception of the emergency responders, did not give their lives so that their nation might live. Their lives were stolen by religious fanatics bent on achieving world domination for a bizarre and brutal sect.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

Can anyone disagree that this applies to the WTC and the Pentagon sites?

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

Even if that last phrase doesn't perfectly describe the vast majority of the WTC and Pentagon dead (who gave the last full measure of devotion, but not voluntarily as the soldiers of both the Union and the Confederacy had at Gettysburg), it fits the responding emergency personnel to a T.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

I am completely areligious. But that still draws an "amen" from me every time I hear it.

The Gettysburg Address is only nominally about a nation at civil war. It is about the sacrifice made by those who died in a war being waged so that "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." It is about renewing the commitment of the living "to the great task remaining before us[:] ... that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ..."

Re-read that speech, Jeff. There's a reason we had to memorize it in grade school.

 
It appears to be official now, if it wasn't already. The Washington Post is reporting that Saudi Arabia won't allow an attack on Iraq from its soil.

Saudi Arabia has made clear to Washington – publicly and privately – that the U.S. military will not be allowed to use the kingdom's soil in any way for an attack on Iraq, Foreign Minister Prince Saud said Wednesday.

We had plenty of warning on the Saudi position. That's why we moved, as reported on July 29:

The Saudis believe that the U.S. won't try to go to war without them. But in the war rooms inside the Pentagon and at Central Command in Tampa, Fla., military strategists no longer think the U.S. needs the Saudis to dislodge Saddam. Strategists say a war against Iraq would require as many as 200,000 troops, with forces launching from Kuwait, Turkey and the smaller gulf emirates, reinforced by a massive U.S. Navy and Marine presence. The U.S. already has 10,000 Army troops at Kuwait's Camp Doha, where the Pentagon has stored tanks and other weapons. Some 3,000 U.S. troops man the al-Udeid air base in Qatar, just across the gulf from Iraq. The military has added new runways to a 15,000-ft.-long airstrip that is big enough to serve as the backup landing area for the space shuttle. General John Jumper, Air Force chief of staff, says the military is upgrading al-Udeid for use as a command-and-control center if the Saudis put CAOC [Note: Combined Air Operations Center, a U.S.-built facility at the Prince Sultan base] off-limits.

That leaves the question of what becomes of our facility at the Prince Sultan base when the US attack is launched from the sea, Kuwait, Turkey and elsewhere, and coordinated from Qatar. The attack might well cause the house of Saud to be replaced with a fundamentalist regime willing to oppose us militarily (whether by conventional means or otherwise). I wouldn't consider that such a terrible thing since it merely formalizes what is actually happening now (see this report), but I sure as hell don't want our "newly minted" opponents them to inherit a state of the art facility with which to harass and interdict our forces and gather intelligence on those forces. Even if, as Den Beste persuasively argues, the successors to the current Saudi regime will be weaker than the present one, there is certainly no upside to providing them with additional means to oppose us.

Oh, and I love the part of the Saudi announcement saying that they don't mind continuing (from their sacred soil) the part of the operations designed to protect them:

Saudi Arabia has no objections to the United States continuing its decade-old monitoring of Iraqi skies from the U.S. air control center in the kingdom, Saud said.

These guys are the greatest pals we ever had.

 
Instapundit asks Is Iran burning? Maybe, maybe not.

From Glenn Frazier:

According to several trusted email correspondents, Michael Ledeen, and a website run by a pro-democracy Iranian student organization, yesterday saw demonstrations across Iran that erupted into violence.

According to Reuters, UPI, AP, CNN, BBC, and everyone else in the whole universe...nothing. One of the biggest stories out of Iran, according to them, is that a male bellydancer has decided to continue living there despite being barred from teaching dance. What's going on?

The answer to that question could range from "nothing", to "widespread rioting and anti-government violence, news of which is being suppressed by the theocrats." The nice thing about modern communications is that suppression of news can only work on a short term basis. And the term has been getting shorter and shorter.

Spin, on the other hand, can last forever.

 
Steven DenBeste has been saying (for a long time in Blogyears) that requiring the US to wait to be attacked in order to "permit" a military response is dumb. I agree and I won't bore you with the reasoning. Just read DenBeste.

But is anybody listening out there?

From the Times:

Brent Scowcroft [former US National Security Adviser to Bush the Elder - CG] who remains close to the Bush family, urged the President to concentrate on trying to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians while separately pursuing terrorist threats to the United States. But he said that by going to war with Iraq without linking President Saddam Hussein and September 11, Washington was risking a conflagration in the Middle East that would also engulf its efforts to defeat global terror groups.

His warning came as a former British Chief of Defence Staff said that Britain risked being dragged into a “very, very messy” and lengthy war if it supported a US military assault on Iraq. Field Marshal Lord Bramall called on Tony Blair to exercise caution, saying that an invasion to topple Saddam may not be morally or legally justified.

What exactly is it that we now have in the middle east? An acceptable level barbarity? Does Scowcroft think it could get worse? How is it that taking out a major source of revenue and logistical support for terrorists in general and Palestinian terrorists in particular will hurt the war on terror or make things worse for or in Israel? The effect on Iran and Saudi occupied Arabia of ousting Saddam will be bad how, and how does that compare to the effect on those regimes of NOT taking Saddam out?

And another thing: Why is it that we have to either wait for one of our cities to be nuked or prove (to whose satisfaction?) that Saddam already attacked us on 9/11 before going after him? Personally, I live too near to NYC to find the risk of waiting for the morally correct moment to strike (back) acceptable.